Kris Meeke goes off track in the WRC… and still wins the race!

WRC driver Kris Meeke came within a whisker of throwing it all away with a truly surreal mistake during the Rally de Mexico.

The World Rally Championship has got underway, and the first three events of the year have been enough to show us that we are looking at one of the most exciting championships in recent years.

At last weekend’s Rally de Mexico, Kris Meeke secured Citroën’s first victory of the season despite making a colossal error that could have cost him dearly. The Irish driver misjudged a right-hander on the final stage of the rally, sending him off the road and into a public car park when he had a forty-second lead over the second-placed driver. At that moment, Citroën’s engineers were on the edge of their seats, and with good reason, since they had led the race throughout the weekend. Dazed after the accident, Meeke’s instinct was to move away from the track, lunging at some parked cars. Despite the mess he had found himself in, the Irish driver recovered, rejoining the stage like a shot to see the race through to the end.

Despite this minor scare, Kris Meeke won the Rally de Mexico with a 13.8-second advantage over the second-placed driver, Frenchman Sébastien Ogier. At the end of the race, the Citroën driver said: “I think I’ll be telling this story hundreds of times. I’m sorry I made this mistake. The car went off and we were very lucky. We were soon able to get back on track because I knew we could win.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mRoZBmnbPU